Henry Young
MSA SC 3520-17695
Biography:
Henry Young enlisted as a private in the Ninth Company of the First Maryland Regiment on January 21, 1776. The regiment was Maryland's first contingent of full-time, professional soldiers raised to be part of the Continental Army. Many of the men in the company came from Western Maryland, and it was designated as the light infantry company for the regiment. Instead of fighting in a line with the other companies, the light infantry was often deployed in small groups ahead of the main body of troops as scouts or skirmishers. They carried rifles, rather than muskets, and were intended to be a more mobile group.[1]
Young and the rest of the company were ordered to travel from Frederick to Annapolis in March 1776 to join with the rest of the regiment. As they departed, however, they were instructed to head for Baltimore instead to provide reinforcements in case of an anticipated British attack launched from the HMS Otter, a warship reportedly heading for the city. No attack ever materialized, and the company proceeded to Annapolis. They trained there until July, when the First Maryland Regiment was ordered to march north to New York, to protect the city from invasion by the British. [2]
On August 27, 1776, the Americans faced the British Army at the Battle of Brooklyn (sometimes called the Battle of Long Island), the first full-scale engagement of the war. The battle was a rout: the British were able to sneak around the American lines, and the outflanked Americans fled in disarray. As the Maryland troops fought their way towards the American fortifications, they were forced to stop at the swampy Gowanus Creek. Half the regiment was able to cross the creek and escape the battle. However, the rest, including the Ninth Company, were unable to do so before they were attacked by the British. Facing down a much larger, better-trained force, this group of soldiers, today called the "Maryland 400," mounted a series of daring charges. They held the British at bay for some time before being overrun, at the cost of many lives, losing 256 men killed or captured. The Ninth Company fared poorly at the battle, probably because the light infantry's role placed them closest to the enemy lines during combat. Fewer than half the men from the Ninth Company escaped death or captivity at the battle, and at least thirteen soldiers were taken prisoner. [3]
Determining what happened to Young at the battle is difficult, as there is only fragmentary and contradictory informaiton about his life. Although there were multiple people named Henry Young in Western Maryland during and after the Revolutionary War, one of them, a resident of Frederick County, seems like he is the same man who fought at the Battle of Brooklyn. He served in the Maryland Line from 1778 until 1783, surviving the ferocious and bloody combat of the Southern Campaign of 1780-1782 before finally returning home. That Henry Young died in Frederick County in the 1790s. Many years later, his wife Mary applied for a pension as the widow of a Revolutionary soldier, but could only recall that her husband "in or about the year 1776 enlisted as a private in the army of the Revolution in the Maryland Line." Did she pick 1776 because it was when Henry first joined the army--confirming that he was the same Henry in the Ninth Company at the Battle of Brooklyn--or because she remembered only that he fought in the war, and used 1776 as a placeholder? It is impossible to know for sure. The evidence that Henry Young survived the campaign of 1776 and reenlisted two years later is good, but not absolute. Nevertheless, he is still remembered as an early volunteer in the Revolutionary War, and one of the heroic Maryland 400. [4]
Owen Lourie, 2018
Notes:
[1] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 18; George Stricker to Council, 21 January 1776, Journal and Correspondence of the Maryland Council of Safety, August 29, 1775 to July 6, 1776, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 11, p. 102.
[2] Order to Capt. Stricker, Council of Safety Proceedings, 6 March 1776, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 11, p. 202; Order to Capt. Stricker, 9 March 1776, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 11, p. 224-225.
[3] Mark Andrew Tacyn “’To the End:’ The First Maryland Regiment and the American Revolution” (PhD diss., University of Maryland College Park, 1999), 48-73; Return of the Maryland troops, 27 September 1776, from Fold3.com. For more on the experience of the Marylanders at the Battle of Brooklyn, see "In Their Own Words," on the Maryland State Archives research blog, Finding the Maryland 400.
[4] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 259, 324, 475, 510, 562, 653; Pension of Henry Young. National Archives, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land-Warrant Application Files, R 9182, from Fold3.com; Compiled Service Record of Soldiers Who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War, National Archives, NARA M881, from Fold3.com; Commissioner of Army Accounts, Letterbook, 1784-1786, p. 223, MdHR 1762 [MSA S143-1, 1/1/4/12]. In her pension application, Mary said Henry died in 1793. The only record of a Henry Young dying in Frederick County comes is a will from 1791--which is close enough to 1793 to seem like a good fit. That Henry Young was married to a woman named Elizabeth, however. Will of Henry Young, 1791, Frederick County Register of Wills, Wills, Liber GM 2, p. 394 [MSA C898-3, 1/51/9/11].
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